Hooked

silence, then one of her roommates, Loretta, spoke.
    “Maybe because it’s never been this important before.”
    “‘Give Sorrow words,’” Kai Li quoted softly nearby. “‘The grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.’”
    Stephanie turned to her and nodded through a moist haze in her eyes. There was a lifetime of well-practiced compassion in the nurse’s gaze.
    “Two surgeries, half a breast, and six weeks of radiation,” she managed to say before sinking back onto her chair. “Just had my first anniversary and I have no idea what’s ahead.”
    Maura Evans sat forward. “We’re your hope, Stephanie. Five years, eleven years, fifteen years out, and we’re still here.” Several women—staff and participants—nodded and raised hands to own those statistics. “Someday you’ll be someone’s hope, too. That’s how it works.”
    After dinner, they broke for a while, and a plump black woman with a beaming face approached her.
    “Arlene, right?” Steph tried not to let her self-consciousness show.
    “You started me thinkin’,” Arlene said. “What happened to you tonight is what happens to all of us when we first learn we have it. The shock steals our voices and unplugs our usual coping skills. It takes a while for us to find new ways of talking and working and being ourselves. We have to find new sources of joy and pleasure…new ways of lookin’ at the world.” She gave Steph’s hand a squeeze. “But we manage. Lord above, how we manage. And you will, too.”
    She opened her arms and Steph sank into the pillowy softness of them, grateful beyond words for the wisdom and the love that embraced her.
    Later that evening, in a solemn ceremony at the water’s edge, they lit candles and spoke of what made them who they were and what anchored them in times of trouble. If they had one day left on earth, Maura asked, what would they do with it? Who would they spend it with? That was where their truest, deepest values lay.
    It was a moving reminder of all that made their lives worth living.
    * * *
    The next morning came early and the attendees assembled by the water after breakfast for some gentle stretches and warm-up exercises. Special accommodation was made for women whose range of motion had been limited by surgery and lymphedema. Then they received their vests and rods, and sat down for their first lesson in tying flies.
    One by one, the women shed their reserve and fell into a camaraderie that had them making outrageous comments on the crazy names given to certain lures. Humping Prince and Princess Popsicle were favorite targets for innuendo. Then Wooly Bear and Zug Bug and Hare’s Ear were trotted out, and “nymphs” of various saucy persuasions made an appearance. The staff demonstrated spooling a line and preparing a rod and finally casting. By their morning break, the participants were beginning to feel quite at home, even Stephanie.
    By the next session, which had to do with medical breakthroughs in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, inhibitions were dropping like flies. Frank and sometimes uncomfortable questions were handled carefully by the group facilitator, an oncology nurse who happened to be a survivor herself. It was only natural that the medical stuff led into more personal areas of concern, like sex and intimacy.
    Here again the participants’ experiences ran the gamut, from stable, long-term marriages to single-and-looking-for-love. The reactions of the men in their lives were just as diverse as their situations; some stuck like glue and others flaked away like bad paint at the first sign of trouble. Stephanie thought of Finn’s response to his sister’s cancer. Finn, she told herself, was definitely the sticking kind.
    The women spoke of crying at the sight of themselves in mirrors, and Steph knew exactly how that felt. They talked of intimacy and the ways they’d tried to adjust to their changed shapes, and to learn to trust their bodies again.
    “I used to have big boobs,” Loretta declared flatly, looking down at her now modest breasts, “and I can’t say I don’t miss the tingle sometimes.” That drew a few titters and several guffaws. “But it’s just mostly fat, y’all. I said to the docs, ‘Cut ’em off if you have to. I still got my magic button.’”
    Unexpected laughter made Steph choke on the tea she was sipping. Loretta was a life lesson in the flesh: sassy, full of spunk, and defiant against all odds.